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Creativity: The Saga Begins
(I'm feeling Serious. Commentating is serious business.)
Note: Since Jay may want to edit in comments about the videos, we'll denote our writing with our name (ex. "Chris:" for myself) ahead of it.
The video: www.livevideo.com/video/8419BDE837084CA5BA17CD3F0B59E254/creativity.aspx
Chris: Backstory time! This whole thing started when Jay told me that he was tired of letting his Teleproduction Technology degree go to waste. Since I'd graduated with him at the end of the summer of 2006, I felt the same. So when Jay suggested we collaborate together as a way to hone our skills, I readily agreed. Previously, I'd tried to write things for us to work on, but had trouble concentrating and finding time. One suggestion I'd made was a movie idea. That idea led to this series when I realized I wouldn't be able to write a whole movie, but maybe piece it together over time. While thinking about us making a movie, I ended up writing our first collaboration..."Creativity."
Trivia:
- The intro used to be a more plain version of what it is now. Same font, but black and white.
- The intro music is "Bouncing" by D. DiFonzo and Scott Schrear. We snagged it from www.freeplaymusic.com. I'd suggest checking it out as it's a great resource for free production music.
- The "where's my script" line and hand out motion is something Jay kids me with a lot. Usually when I talk about an idea with him his first response is to demand a script immediately. I'm pretty sure he's joking.
- This is modeled on real conversations we've had before. Although Jay's rant about sequels is real, it originated from my own rantings in real life. I think we're both lucky in that we have each other to mess around with like this. To be able to have a friend with which to be completely weird like this is a very fortunate thing. And by weird, I mean incoherently weird save to each other. We still wanted this to appeal to other people, so I cleaned it up.
- Jay's the better actor by far. Or at least, he gets his lines down. I am horrible at remembering lines. This, despite the fact that I wrote the script. Still, we cheated and had the script up on Jay's computer while filming. Just in case.
- I am constantly invading Jay's room. It's fun and entertaining. At least, for me it is.
This was the feeling out video, and I think it was a fair start. Sure, the color correction threw a few things off and the script could've been revised a little more. However, I think it's a solid start and sets up the chemistry between Chris and Jay the characters, as influenced by Chris and Jay the...us. Yeah!
Jay: Yes, Chris has summed this up nicely, except for the fact that I am never joking when I hold out my hand for a script.
So, a note or two...
Here's how we do color correction and other minor tweaks, if anyone's interested. Video is captured into Windows Movie Maker, where we make the very basic cuts and then export at full quality to AVI format. Then that video is imported into Adobe After Effects, where color correction is applied, along with whatever other cool effects are needed. After Effects is also needed to letterbox the video since my camera shoots in 16x9. Then the video is exported from After Effects in 640x480 uncompressed AVI format. Finally, that video is imported back into Windows Movie Maker and resaved as a smaller WMV file, ready for upload to the site. So, a lot of technical nonsense for you, but important to us. Cheers!
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